GWERU:Residents in the Midlands capital last week proposed that government should provide free education starting from rural schools.Speaking during public consultations on the Education Amendment Bill,a Gweru based welfare organisation, Jointed Hands programmes managerPeterson Dube told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Primaryand Secondary Education that his organisation supported clauses in thebill that facilitated free education.

“Our recommendation is that from the age of three up to secondarylevel, education must be free,”Dube said. “While we know that this cannot be achieved overnight, we propose that rural and community schools must be immediately declared centres of free education.” He added

Several other participants agreed with Dube and urged government toenforce free education starting with rural schools.Dube said the proposed law must also cater for early childhooddevelopment (ECD) adding that schools in rural areas were not gettingadequate support.

“There is need to come up with an effective teacher pupil ratioespecially for infant classes because currently there is a teacherpupil ratio of one teacher against 70 pupils, a situation which is notconducive for learning,” Dube stated.

He said the current state of ECD education showed that government hadonly managed to train 37 percent of the required staff at that level.